Agreed. That is not the point. If dates are communicated then the expectation is dates will be met.
Purism has to understand and appreciate the fact that they are not being pressurized or put in corner by the very “customers” who supported the effort. I think the supporters have so for gotten used to the “lack of communication” idea. It has been accepted as a “new normal”. So if Purism is quoting delivery dates well, they should meet those dates.
Otherwise, as I said earlier, their estimation has almost always been wrong and they are pretty consistent on that.
1 Like
Are you better at providing estimates to others?
I never said that, the point is don’t commit if you cannot meet it. We are okay with the “new normal” of lack of communication.
I ordered my Librem 5 on 23rd October 2017 and considering the updates from Purism, it would be too optimistic to expect it before the 3rd quarter of 2021
1 Like
If one’s forecast/estimate is 50/50, I agree it is still information.
If one’s is 99% false, I think it’s not a lie but a false statement.
Strictly speaking, 50/50 is not information, because you might as well flip a coin.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2270/
3 Likes
If you study information theory. That’s information. 100% isn’t information.
I tend to agree that Purism does intentionally hide information in its web site and publicity in order to generate more orders for the Librem 5. This practice does generate backlash from customers who feel like they were deceived, however, it is generally possible to figure out what is the actual state of the phone’s development by asking the developers and watching the public bug tracker. People who bother to read the community FAQ and this forum will get a pretty good idea what is the current state of the phone.
I agree that saying people ordering today will get the phone “in a few months” is deceptive, since most people assume that a “few” means in a range between 2 and 5 (inclusive), even though the dictionary definition of a “few” is ambiguous, as Merriam Webster explains in its essay “‘Couple,’ ‘Few,’ and ‘Several’: The (Mostly) Definitive Guide”.
As a backer, I generally forgive Purism for these practices, because it is incredibly hard to finance free/open source software development, and Purism has undertaken two incredibly important projects by working to get mainline Linux support for the Librem 5’s hardware (including the i.MX 8M Quad which is the only decent CPU for mobile RYF devices currently on the market) and by developing the Phosh mobile environment (which has the best shot of the available interfaces to make Linux a viable alternative to Android and iOS). At this point, Purism is basically the only company paying for software development for mobile Linux, aside from Jolla which develops a proprietary Silica interface and Blue Systems which has a few developers working on Plasma Mobile.
Anyone criticizing Purism’s marketing of the Librem 5 needs to seriously ask how Purism is going to generate the funds to pay 10 software developers to work on mobile Linux. Remember that the work that Purism is doing is benefiting the entire GTK/GNOME ecosystem, and that 70% of PinePhone users report using Phosh.
My read of the situation is that Purism is facing financial constraints that limit its ability to mass produce the phone, and it needs the funds from more orders to be able to produce the phone quickly. A Chinese assembler should be able to rapidly produce 5k-10k phones if Purism has the funds on hand to pay for it. The question that we as a community should be debating is how to market the Librem 5 in a way that generates more orders, but doesn’t mislead customers.
Purism needs to hire more developers to work on the phone’s software, but again the company appears to be financially constrained, and needs more orders of the phone to be able to pay for more software developers to work on the Librem 5.
I do think that Purism should change the language on its web site back to “6 months,” but it seems to me that we as a community should be conscious of the financial realities that Purism faces. Anyone who thinks that mobile Linux is going to be a successful platform without paid developers is frankly deluding themselves. That means that Purism has to market the phone in a way that generates more orders or Purism has to raise more venture capital (and getting venture capital often comes with strings attached that we probably won’t like).
Previous attempts to market Linux phones failed in the past, and we should be extremely conscious of how hard it is for Purism to make this work as a viable business. If we scream “Purism lies” and that causes people to stop ordering the phone, then we are stuck with a dark future where no company is willing to pay for serious mobile Linux development. We are going to have to hope that the nine volunteers at UBports with commit access can maintain millions of lines of siloed code or be prepared to wait years for Plasma Mobile to eventually get good enough without decent corporate support for the platform.
10 Likes
But what about possible hardware problems which can only be found by a large number of users and extensive testing? Purism probably chose the “just in time” development to save themselves from producing 10k faulty phones.
1 Like
and going bankrupt and ending our hopes for a linux phone.
I think that Purism was purposely limited its production in Q4 2020, because it wasn’t yet sure of its hardware and didn’t yet have FCC certification. However, at this point, Purism should be finishing up the FCC testing, and Purism has verified that the rear camera hardware works and has done some preliminary software testing on the smartcard reader. By the end of Q1, Purism shouldn’t have any more questions about its hardware design and it is a lot cheaper per phone to mass produce in one production batch rather than do JIT manufacturing. The only way that I can explain why Purism is projecting that it will deliver an order from 2017-10-17 in May 2021 is because the company doesn’t have the funds on hand to order a big production run, so it has to wait for more orders to finance small production runs, which cost more per phone.
1 Like
Or it could be explained by a combination of longer lead times than you are assuming for each production run, combined with our constraints on the number of customers that support can interact with and the number of corresponding phones we can ship out from California each week, and the fact that we are trying to be somewhat conservative with our shipping estimates, just in case. While we are continuing to expand those teams not just for the backlog but also to address the steadily increasing new orders (as we mention in the most recent post) we aren’t there yet.
7 Likes
As the other thread was closed, I’ll post here, asking if there is any updated info on the L5 USA shipping schedule. Thank you.
When we have updated info to share we’ll be sure to put it in a post. We are working on one but don’t have all the information together yet.
2 Likes
Exactly this!
The last thing I want, is to demotivate the people working on the L5. I fully appreciate how hard it is to develop something like the L5. I am still eagerly anticipating the day I will receive my L5.
But as I said before, I am pretty frustrated, and somewhat depressed by the way Purism has been janking our chain over the last couple of years.
One poignant example of this was mentioned above by eugenr. I thought about it quite a bit, but so far I haven’t been able to explain why Purism went about this the way they did.
It concerns the batch-preference mail.
Why, oh why, did Purism send a mail to four or five thousand people, asking them about their batch preference, while, at that time, they must have been fully aware these first batches were only going to consist of a mere few phones?!
What was the point?!
I remember agonizing about the best strategy for picking my preferred batch. I wondered what my odds would be for ending up in one or the other batch.
Meanwhile, you over there at the Purism offices must have been fully aware that someone who had signed up in early 2019 would have no chance what so ever to end up anywhere else than at the tail end of the Evergreen batch. Whatever I answered, whatever anybody else answered, it would not have changed a thing. It was a futil exercise. I dare say, it was a misleading one.
So, I would really like to know what the reasoning behind this communication was? What were you trying to accomplish?!
4 Likes
I think what was trying to be accomplished was “more communication” as that was, as I recall, the loudest complaint at the moment. Since then the complaints have been refined and articulated better, as “more frequent and meaningful communication”.
I think asking everyone for their preference did provide some useful information that could be relevant for future products, like what percentage of our early adopters really do want development grade devices. It also may have been used to affect the size of the B-D batches. A seems like it was always intended to be extremely small, but the others may have increased/decreased based on demand for those batches.
I also seem to recall them making it pretty clear that the email was gauging demand and voluntary. If you didn’t respond you were automatically placed in evergreen.
I don’t see this as deceptive for the time, maybe not as clear and precise as it could have been, but far from malicious.
1 Like
This is a good example of how these threads that are intended to be a discussion of the news post, end up going off-topic and turn into a Purism AMA. We need to try to keep these news post threads more on topic if we want to continue having them.
2 Likes
OK it’s clear this thread has run its course and there’s no hope of it serving its original purpose (comment thread for the news story) so I’m going to lock it and people can choose to create new topics if they want to continue discussions.
6 Likes